DOMINANT POWER AND THE MARGINALIZED AS ENABLERS OF DOMINATION IN OKEY NDIBE’S FOREIGN GODS, INC.

Abstract

Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc. (2014) depicts a Nigerian immigrant Ikechukwu Uzondu and the villagers of Utonki navigating economic desperation, religious exploitation, and cultural commodification. Existing scholarship has examined the novel through transnational migration, diaspora identity, cultural and spiritual commodification, religious appropriation, and the interplay of indigenous religion with Christianity and Western capitalism. This study shifts the focus to marginalized characters as perpetrators of dominant power. It argues that ordinary, disadvantaged individuals, needy natives, struggling immigrants, and ordinary worshippers, sustain the systems that exploit them through everyday decisions shaped by faith, economic necessity, and constrained choices. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s conception of power as circulating through social relations and Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the internalization of dominant values, the research uses qualitative close reading to examine relations between the vulnerable and the privileged. Pastor Uka’s dominance and the Western art market’s appropriation of sacred objects, exemplified by Mark Gruels, depend significantly on the enabling actions of those they exploit. By identifying this enabling role, the study addresses a gap in criticism that has emphasized immigration and cultural dislocation while under-examining how the marginalized reinforce unequal authority. Ultimately, the study positions Foreign Gods, Inc. as a political novel that interrogates how the marginalized aid the exploitative tendencies of the mainstream.